February Update

You may have noticed that I haven't written an article for a few weeks, so I wanted to give you an update on the things that have been taking up my time...

Scottish Power Platform User Group

On 21st February, Scottish Power Platform User Group held our first in person event titled "Best Kept Secrets of the Power Platform". Around 50 members of the business applications community got together at Microsoft Edinburgh to listen to a series of presentations from myself (Solution Architect, Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation ), Chris Slemp (Customer Success Manager, 微软 ) and Patrick Byrne ???? (Lead Functional Consultant, Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation ).

Strategy for Introducing Customer's to Power Platform

Chris Slemp presented a great session focusing on how he helped introduce Power Platform to his customers, talking about the importance of starting small, find a high impact use case, that is easy to resolve - and go from there.

What's new in Power Platform

My session focused on upcoming features for Power Platform (of course it did!)

I introduced the audience to some of the great features coming in the next few months including:

• Fluent UI for Model Driven Apps (and Canvas apps soon!)
• Collaborative App Building
• Test Engine for Custom Pages and Model Driven Apps
• Associate Activities with other activities
• Use Natural Language to create Flows

"Get the Tables"

Patrick Byrne ???? spoke about working with data outside of Dataverse, covering when and why you might opt to store data elsewhere. He gave a great demo of the new virtual table experience, and also how you could go a step further and use Azure API Management to provide a more robust and secure way of working with external data.

Between sessions, there was some great networking between group members. it was great to see a wide range of experiences coming together for the evening!

Special thanks to our sponsors - Ingentive and Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation - and a huge shout out to the SPPUG team Charlie Phipps-Bennett ???? | Alex MacArthur | Lindsay Climson

Planning is underway for our next event at the end of this month. Head over to SPPUG.com for details of upcoming events or join us on LinkedIn

Lego R2-D2 Competition

To celebrate the launch of Scottish Power Platform User Group, we held a competition where entrants were challenged to take a sample app and work their magic on the UI. Our panel selected our top 4 entries (it was supposed to be 3, but we couldn't whittle it down to just 3)

We then ran a poll where over 150 members of the Business Apps community voted for the winner...

4th Place - Jamie McCarroll

I really like the use of colours on this app, its very pleasing on the eyes

3rd Place - Keith Atherton

Keith's entry was very "on brand" for a Scottish Power Platform User Group competition simple yet effective

2nd Place - Laura W.

Laura's effort made really great use of gradients to make a really nice looking app.

1st Place - Ben Bruce

Ben's app went above and beyond! It featured light mode and dark mode, which is great from an accessibility point of view, and also included tooltips to make it screen reader friendly.

All four apps were amazing in their own way - I found it really interesting to see the results. Congratulations to Ben on his win

Microsoft Transport Hackathon

On 1st March, 微软 and Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation hosted a hackathon for a series of companies from the transport industry - Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) , Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) , Transport for London , Department for Transport (DfT), United Kingdom HS2 (High Speed Two) Ltd and London North Eastern Railway (LNER) came together with Power Platform experts from Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation to build solutions over the course of a day to help solve a business challenge.

Over the course of the day we saw approvals apps, template managers, and a mapping solution to help connect doctors and barristers.

My Team (LNER) pulled together an app that will be used to scan a customer's ticket, and return details of the trains where the customer can use that ticket, including the platform, time and train operator. The app included a header component that can be easily customised to fit other rail operator's branding, and uses data from an API that holds nationwide train information - with the aim of producing something that can be used be any staff member, from any rail operator, to help any customer catch any train. The use case provided by the team at LNER was really great - I'm sure we have all been in a situation where we are in a hurry to catch a train - this app serves to help station staff quickly assist customers - and could be the difference between catching a train, or missing a train an ruining whatever you had planned that day!

At the end of the day, all 6 apps were judged by William Dorrington ?? (CTO, Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation ) and Janet Robb (Customer Success Manager, 微软 ) - and I am incredibly proud to say that our app was voted the winner! I'm looking forward to working with LNER on a few final pieces, then potentially releasing the app to production very soon - say goodbye to constant confusion in train stations!

Huge shout out to Janet Robb and James Fenton from 微软 and team at Kerv Digital for Digital Transformation for organising an amazing event!

What's coming up?

As mentioned above, Scottish Power Platform User Group is planning our next event for the end of March, date will be confirmed very soon - this will be a virtual event, it would be great to see as many of you as possible!

I'll also be getting back to producing regular blogs showcasing the amazing new features for Power Platform... watch this space

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